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Thursday, January 9, 2014

Pikme is a great classroom management app that can help improve student participation. Note that this app will be found under the iPhone App category. Simply enter your student names into the app, select the class name, and shake your device. The app randomly selects a student.

In addition, the app offers a quick way to group students. Tap the button, modify the group settings, and tap CREATE. The 1 1/2 minute video below shows a few additional features:

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Growing Your PLN

Becoming a connected educator has been an interesting road for me. Over the past few years, I've dabbled in reading blogs, following other educators on Twitter and Pinterest, and listening to podcasts. Somehow, over the course of the last few years, my Personal Learning Network has grown into a fairly large group of educators with similar goals. This video describes exactly what happened in my journey, but may also help you in seeing the "why" behind what intrigues educators to social media:

Currently, these social networking tools are part of my informal professional growth plan. None of them takes up a lot of time, but the wealth of information that others are sharing is incredible. I love what this blog said about being a connected educator... "it can also provide you with ongoing inspiration and support."

Twitter

There are so many tools, I do recognize that you need to choose what works for you. However, I want to share the tool, Twitter, because I found that many educators are using it to share ideas and I've found that it works really well for me. I love reading short snippets of information, then deciding if I want to read more by clicking the provided link to a blog, photo, weblink, etc.

To get started, create an account here. The basics of twitter can be found on their Getting Started with Twitter help page. View the image below to understand the various parts of a tweet. It may seem like a lot at first, but it gets easier as you explore while reading others' tweets or you begin tweeting yourself.

Remember these basic rules:

A tweet cannot be longer than 140 characters long

When mentioning someone, use their twitter handle; this begins with the @ symbolFor example, when mentioning me, enter @sarrasmith3 into the tweet somewhere and I will take note that you mentioned me!

When tweeting, your followers (those who have chosen to follow you.. more info here) will see the tweet in their twitter feed

When getting started, begin following others that tweet about things you are interested in (such as, education)